A slant of journalists

Sheila Cohen (Letters, 15 February) is right to emphasise the role of organised workers in the Egyptian revolution and call for solidarity with the wave of strikes and workers' protests spreading across Egypt. Last Sunday, the country's military government announced that it would ban strikes, and while it seems to have stepped back from this, the threat remains. If you want to support the new, independent Egyptian labour movement, we will be meeting at the Unite HQ, 128 Theobald's Road, Holborn, London at 6.30pm today. Please join us.

Sacha Ismail

London

• Thank you for the Olympics booklet (London 2012, ticket guide & schedule, 15 February). Since each band D household will contribute £140 in extra council tax towards the cost of the Olympics, plus what we contribute through general taxation, wouldn't it be appropriate to give us free tickets in line with those handed out to other corporate sponsors?

Roger Backhouse

Ilford, Essex

• The Somerset starlings were amazing, but the caption a little confusing (Eyewitness, 14 February). It's not that "Flocks such as these are known as murmurations", as you had it, but that the collective term for starlings is a murmuration. These terms were compiled in The Book of St Albans, published in 1486. Here you find not only the terms we still use, eg a bevy of beauties and a pride of lions, but those that have fallen out of common use, eg a crash of rhinoceroses and an exaltation of larks. This last gave the title for James Lipton's book on the subject. One of the many terms Lipton coined in his book was "a slant of journalists".